


Singularity

by Janet_Coleman_Sides



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Love Confessions, Love Letters, M/M, Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janet_Coleman_Sides/pseuds/Janet_Coleman_Sides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disturbed by thoughts of mortality, Al holes up in a hotel room in Vegas and writes a painful letter to Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Singularity

**Author's Note:**

> _According to quantum mechanics, space is filled with virtual particles that are constantly materializing in pairs, separating, coming together again, and annihilating each other. In the presence of a black hole, one member of a pair of virtual particles may fall into the hole, leaving the other member without a partner with which to annihilate. The forsaken particle appears to be radiation emitted by the black hole. And so, black holes are not eternal. -- **STEPHEN HAWKING**_

_Dear Sam._

Ziggy says you won't land for another week and a half. 'Get outside and blow the stink off,' says Verbena. 'Run outside and play.' Like you're a job I get vacation from. To paraphrase a great movie, no matter where I go, there you are. 

(Albert pauses to cut a fresh cigar, meticulously snipping the end and taking care to light it evenly, rolling the cigar through the very edges of the Zippo's flame. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the taste, far as he's ever been able to tell -- but for what these cost you might as well treat 'em nice.

(Then he picks up the pen again. -- Nice, well-balanced gold pen, and the creamy paper he's writing on is beautiful: handmade marbled sheets he got years ago in Italy.

(It won't make a damn bit of difference to Sam, but for what these words are gonna cost Al to write, he might as well write 'em down nice. His handwriting is aggressive, but the letters are evenly articulated and march straight across the page, though there are no lines for them to walk on.)

_I told Verbena I needed to stick around, work with Ziggy some more. You can't remember, probably, but Ziggy always liked me best, and sometimes I can get more out of her than any of the systems staff...we're trying so hard to get you home._

(He wants a drink. But he has promised himself to wait until he has signed his name.

(He has locked himself in a hotel room with food and cigars, and a couple of magazines for those odd moments. In a fit of gallows humor he has taken down the shade from the lamp which hangs over the writing desk. Nothing like a bare lightbulb over the head for confessions.)

_And Verbena says I can't take care of you if I don't go take care of myself. And I say What does that mean? And she tells me that if I don't keep my blood pressure down I'll have a heart attack._

Now that's a phrase a guy uses all the time. -- I thought I'd have a heart attack. Her mom just about had a heart attack. You nearly gave me a heart attack sneakin' up on me like that. -- Right? You think nothin' of it. 

And I try to yes-yes her and get my own way but she won't have any of that. Sam needs you, she says.

Well yeah! I snap at her, He needs me here!

He needs you alive, says Verbena, and I look her right in the eye and I can see she means it. It's that bad. 

(Al leans back in the chair, pays attention to his cigar for a minute or two. Worth every penny...smooth and bright like cinnamon and cream. And the black Kamaroon wrapper lurking in with just the merest hint of Coca-Cola. Yeah, yeah, yeah. -- But he's just stalling, and he knows it.)

_So, I've been hustled out of New Mexico and packed off to Vegas for a week. And on the long road from there to here I started thinking about something I never wanted to think about again, and some things I could hardly believe I was thinking._

(He leans back again, a little more sharply this time, but even though he is alone his face is under careful control. He's a little more savage with the cigar...but it still tastes good.)

_I'll be around awhile, I think...but I ain't getting any younger...neither are you. I was driving west on Route 40 real late last night and a little voice says in my ear, 'Sooner or later, one of you will die. One of you will die first.'_

And I had to pull off the road for a couple of minutes because my hands were shaking.

You can't be all the places I've been without being well acquainted with the thought of your own mortality. I never expected I'd live this long, tell you the truth...

But the mere thought of yours, and I have to pull off the road. That's one of the things I need to tell you about. That's just what I did, last year my time, god knows what in yours: pulled over and sat it out...When I had to bully you into cutting your wrists, because that's what Oswald did the first time. Talk about trust, you hardly even argued with me, you did it because I told you to do it and you trusted me.

But you deserved a witness. And I turned my back. 

I couldn't watch. I meant to, to give you that much support, you know? At least that. But the light bouncing off the razor blade kept drawing my eye and then I had this picture in my head of something going wrong, that it wasn't the right thing to do or else you changed history so Olga wouldn't arrive in time to save you... saw you lying dead on the tile, white with lost blood. And I couldn't watch. I felt like, if I watched, the things I'd seen in my mind's eye would have to happen. 

\-- I know what you're thinking. I know exactly what you'd say. That you understand, that I did you no wrong, that you would never blame me for that. I don't know that you even noticed it at the time, and I doubt you remember it now. But I was there and I remember.

I'm sorry, Sam.

Well, that's one of the things I needed to say.

(He gets up from the desk and paces for a few minutes. The room is spacious, but his nervous energy fills it till it seems as cramped as a cage.

(With a grim set to his jaw he reluctantly sits down again, gets a swallow of ice water with lime, and picks up the pen.)

_So. I was pulled over on the side of Route 40 west, gripping the steering wheel and fighting against this big, terrible explosion of cold that for a minute I was afraid really was a heart attack. But it wasn't._

I saw it one way and then I saw it the other. First it was you. I thought about standing by the side of your grave on a beautiful spring day in Elk Ridge. Dress whites on. Feeling like...feeling nothing. Nothing left. Staring at the neatly-hewn hole in the damp ground and seriously considering flinging myself in. People talk to me and I can't understand what they say.

But that's nothing compared to thinking about waking up the next day and realizing you're still gone!

(He halts: he has run out of space. The last several lines have broken out of ranks and run amok along the page. Unheeding, he puts the page aside and takes out a second sheet of heavy creamy paper, marks the top neatly with a circled "2".)

_And I thought to myself, God, I don't want to live without Sam._

But then I thought about God granting my wish and me dying first -- and then I saw you at a graveside in Annapolis, all in black, and your face long and sorrowful...You had dignity, you know? You suffered with style, if that ain't too weird a thing to say... I felt kinda proud of you. But then your face just kind of collapsed in on itself and you cried, so hard that you tried to hide your face in your hands. The honor guard was trying hard not to look at you. Oh, Jesus, Sam, only somebody being tortured sounds like that. Shit. Shit. I'm crying myself now.

(As if to prove his words, a drop falls, glistening, to the page to paint a delicate splash-mark, like a bomb crater viewed from high above, through the word "now".

(He scrubs impatiently at his eyes with the heel of his hand, takes a deep breath, and continues.)

_Those moments sitting there in the car rank up there among the worst of my life, I think. They've got competition, but they're red-hot contenders._

And that's when I decided that this letter had to be written, and it had to be written now. Because if I do die first, I don't wanna go without a proper goodbye. I don't wanna go without telling you...

(He stares down at the page a long time, at the blank place just ahead of the end of this line. Then he watches as the pen seems to forge ahead of its own accord.)

_...that I love you._

Sam, I love you more than I've loved anyone in my whole life, and you have loved me better than anyone else ever wanted to. 

And I don't care what it sounds like, I don't care what you think of me for it. I don't just love you. I'm in love with you. Have been. For awhile.

Sam, I'm so in love with you it makes my teeth ache.

(Al puts down the pen with a clatter and springs up to pace once more.

(But he marches himself back to the desk and sits himself back down. The hand that picks up the pen again is trembling, but he glares at it till it stops.)

_If you're reading this, I'm dead. And I'm here to tell you that I still love you._

I don't know what I believe about the afterlife. I used to think I knew, but after the last couple of years with you leaping, I'm not sure anymore. I had stopped believing in heaven, but I never doubted hell. I thought there really was no goodness in people -- that we are all nothing but a veneer of civilization over a greedy, brutal, worthless core. 

And that's where I was when I met you.

You changed my mind about a lot of the world. Singlehandedly, you were my change of heart.

Because of you I know that there are still impossible dreams worth dreaming. Because of you I know that even I am more than just a greedy, brutal, worthless creature.

Sam, I hope you never have to get this letter. I hope that when I'm allowed to come back to work we'll really figure out a way to bring you home...that we get you home, and I can tell you all these things to your face. Come home, Sam, and I will.

But if you are reading this...please know that I would trade heaven just to see you one more time. I swear to you we will meet again.

All my love,

AL.

(He leans back, exhaling slowly, and sucks at the cigar for several long minutes as though it were his thumb.

(The ink is not quite dry as he folds up the letter, but that's too bad. He stuffs it in an envelope, seals it, and stashes it away in his jacket pocket. He'll have to hang onto it till he can put it in his safety deposit box. 

(This has been the most difficult thing he has ever done, he thinks, as he switches off the stripped hanging lamp, and leaves his self-imposed interrogation room behind.)


End file.
